Vicente Ferrer dies after a whole life devoted to cooperation in India

Vicente Ferrer, one of the most relevant world figures of the century within the field of cooperation, has died at the age of 89 accompanies by his family and close collaborators in his house of Anantapur, where he has worked the last 40 years of his life to struggle against poverty and social inequalities.

Vicente Ferrer, one of the most relevant world figures of the century within the field of cooperation, has died at the age of 89 accompanies by his family and close collaborators in his house of Anantapur, where he has worked the last 40 years of his life to struggle against poverty and social inequalities. Serious breathing and heart complications as a consequence of the brain vascular accident he suffered last 19th of March have been the causes of his death. The foundation he created and is named after him has helped more than two million people from the district of Anantapur.

The Vicente Ferrer Foundation has created in its website a space to remember him where users can leave their condolence messages. His death involves a great loss for humanity and especiall for groups of vulnerable population, because Ferrer understood that peace is not only the lack of conflicts, but also the struggle against discrimination, suffering and poverty. He devoted his whole life to this struggle.

Vicente Ferrer FoundationThrough this Foundation he chaired until the day of his death, Vicente Ferrer articulated in Anantapur (state of Andhra Pradesh, India) a pioneer system of integral development projects based on six working areas: Education, housing, women, health, ecology and disabled people. Currently, this project is extended to 2287 villages and helps two and a half milion people of the dalit or untouchable communities and of tribal groups and other disfavoured castes of the country.

A life devoted to the disfavouredVicente Ferrer, humanist born in Barcelona on the 9th of April 1920, pioneer in the elaboration of integral development project, struggles in 1936 with the Republican front con el frente republicano affiliated to POUM where he participates in the battle of Ebro. At the end of the war he began Law studies, which he left to join the Jesus Company.

In 1952 he travels to Mumbai as a Jesuit missionary to complete his spiritual education, and meets the situation of the poor in India. From that moment he will devote his whole life to improve the situation of the poorest of the country. Ferrer starts working different organisation procedures among small cooperatives to provide water to the community and promote the crops, build a hospital and schools for about half a thousand people.

However in 1968 the leading classes force his expulsion because they see their interestes under threat. In 1969 the mobilization of more than 30000 peasants together with politicians such as Indira Gandhi, intellectuals and religious leaders allow their return together with six volunteers in one of the poorest and dryest regions of the country: Anantapur. That year he abandoned the Jesus Company and marries Anne Perry, English journalist follower of the missionary since the conflict of his expulsion, with whom he creates the Vicente Ferrer Foundation.

During his long life, Vicente Ferrer has received different acknowledgements of his work, such as the Concord Award of the Prince of Asturias (1998), the Sant Jordi Cross of the Catalonian Autonomous Government (Generaliat) (2000) or the Great Cross of Civil Order of Solidarity of the Ministry of Work and Social Affairs of Spain (2002). Today he is among the finalists of the award Català de l'Any and the candidature of the Vicente Ferrer Foundation for the Nobel Peace Prize is being promoted.